There are many illnesses and conditions that cause vomiting. For example, pregnancy often causes morning sickness; cancer treatment often causes vomiting; and many healthy people become nauseated to the point of vomiting in moving vehicles such as buses or airplanes. In many cases, the episode of vomiting can occur in a public place with no way for the sufferer to get to a bathroom, which adds humiliation to the distress of being sick.
To help people cope with this problem, many types of emesis bags exist on the market. Typically, these are disposable paper or plastic bags that can contain the vomitus long enough to enable the patient to get to a suitable disposal location. Such a bag can be placed in the seat pocket of an airplane for a passenger, or carried on one's person if one is pregnant or afflicted with an illness that causes frequent vomiting. The most common design for a disposable emesis bag is a plastic-coated paper bag with a rectangular bottom; this is the typical air-sickness bag. Some such bags, such as the one described in U.S. application Ser. No. 11/704,606 to Longo, come bundled with a kit that includes breath mints, moist towelettes, and other materials that can help a person clean themselves up after having vomited.
One of the issues that is not addressed by the disposable emesis bag design is the fact that holding a typical disposable emesis bag to one's face is not very comfortable for the user's nose or chin. While there are emesis basins and containers in existence that have specially shaped openings that conform to the user's face, those basins and containers are typically larger, less portable, reusable, and thus more suited for hospital use than for portability and easy disposal. For example, U.S. application Ser. No. 09/764,580 to Parker discloses an emesis container that has a funnel-shaped mouth area for conforming to the user's face. While such a funnel is more comfortable for the user than the opening of a paper bag, the container disclosed in the Parker application is too cumbersome to carry or to tuck into a seat pocket of an airplane.
Furthermore, a typical emesis bag typically does not provide any way to absorb or minimize the odors or sounds of vomiting, which can cause significant distress to the user and to those around the user.
A need therefore exists for a disposable emesis bag that is more comfortable to hold to one's face than a typical air sickness bag, but that is not more cumbersome, complex, or significantly more expensive to manufacture than a typical air sickness bag.